Though the shortest month of the year, it certainly doesn’t feel like it based on the many events and happenings of this February. Whether it was starting a discipleship group, a once-in-a-century winter storm in Texas, an impromptu trip to Kansas, getting kicked off of fields for playing an organized sport in a pandemic, or starting marriage counseling, it has been a full month.
As I mentioned in my last email, I was about to start leading a discipleship group with my church. It’s a 10-week group, and the idea behind the group is to help people learn how to live alongside a community of other believers and share their faith with the people in their own city.
I first did the program the summer I moved to Austin, and it was a big growing experience for me. I liked parts of it, and I struggled to get into other parts of it. One of the biggest pushes within the curriculum is to make it reproducible. The idea is that if you make something extremely simple and easy to follow, then those who go through the group can easily lead the group in the future. This both made it nice but also had me feeling like I was part of a system with very rigid rules around how to function in this system.
This was completely contrary to the freedom I had felt in Christ, so I really struggled that first summer to get into the group rhythms. Unfortunately, I didn’t read through the book that we were supposed to be reading through and didn’t fully keep up with the workbook either. However, about 9 months later, after I got involved with another group in Austin that was focused on sharing their faith, I started to come around to some of the tools that were taught, and now read the book with a different lens.
The truth is, there are still some parts of it that is some ways make me cringe as I go through the book, but at the end of the day, this is a system put into place to help people learn how to share their faith and make disciples from those who are willing to listen to you. No system is perfect except for Jesus’ system, and this was the best effort at trying to mimic Jesus’s example.
In reality, so many of us don’t know how to share our faith, so these tools that can be learned for sharing the gospel and discipling aren’t an absolute must that you have to use to make it happen, but many of us need them to know where to even start.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all when it comes to sharing your faith, but there is a one-size-fits-all faith for all humankind. It may look different depending on the culture you live in, but the gospel itself is unchanging.
I digress.
Leading this group has been one of the coolest, nerve-racking, scary experiences I’ve had in a while. It’s cool to be able to help others start sharing their faith and learn that it’s not as hard as you think. It’s been cool to get out and do it myself again. I felt like I hadn’t done it in quite a while before going out with these guys. But I’ve also been nervous almost every time I meet with my group. I want to be able to lead well and I often feel unequipped to be able to do that. I have been so grateful for my co-leaders, Josh and Veronica. It seriously takes the weight off when you know you can depend on two others to pick up the slack where you leave off.
Perhaps a more in depth explanation of what all this group does is due for next update, but since I’ve already talked a fair bit about this part, I’ll leave it at that.
Besides the DMI that I’m leading, there have certainly been some exciting events in the fair state of Texas. With the winter storm of a century, our apartment lost power for almost 60 hours, and the temperature got down inside to 38 degrees. I was planning a trip to Kansas to do wedding planning and engagement pictures the weekend after the storm, so when the storm hit early and I was without power and the ability to work, I decided to push my trip up a couple of days which was nice so that I could spend a little extra time with Lia and my family.
At the same time, it felt a bit odd to leave the city of Austin while there was a natural disaster going on. Here millions are suffering, and the Christian guy who’s interested in missions drives away to a place to stay warm. I certainly had some reservations about leaving, and had I not already been planning to leave that weekend, I definitely would not have left the city, but in the end, I felt like I had peace about leaving, and it ended up being a really sweet time with family back home, so I was grateful for that.
I feel my schedule continues to pick up more and more rapidly while we come closer to the end of the quarter, but I also feel that God is giving me more and more energy to keep up with it. I’m trying as hard as I can to keep relying on His strength and not my own, because I know as soon as I don’t, I’m going to crumble into a mess.
As I write this, the thing on my mind is “God is good.” And I can’t wait to see what next month will bring.
P.S. I know I said I was going to start emailing these out instead of putting it on my blog, but I haven’t quite gotten there yet, so this will have to do for now.